Almost exactly 50½ years ago, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. As a result of the 50th anniversary of the assassination, a spate of new books about the horrific event came out. Although I well remember the assassination of Robert Kennedy (a topic for a separate column), I was barely 4 years old at the time of President Kennedy’s assassination and I simply don’t remember anything about it. About 20 years ago I read a book by Gerald Posner (a former attorney as well as being an author) about the assassination entitled “Case Closed.” I had selected it off of the shelf in the bookstore because I noticed that one of the people whose praise for the book was printed on the back cover was Walter Cronkite, for whom I have great respect.

In his book, Posner examined some of the conspiracy theories about JFK’s assassination. He makes a convincing case that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone by using relentless logic to demolish the conspiracy theorists’ conjectures of what happened, and he also interviewed some of the “sources” used by the authors of the conspiracy books who were still alive (Posner wrote his book in 1993). The “sources” whom Posner interviewed were either (a) ridiculous to the point of being borderline lunatics, (b) literally people who had spent time in a facility for the mentally ill or (c) people who were in complete possession of all their faculties who either categorically denied what the conspiracy authors claimed they had said or stated that the conspiracy authors had so distorted or taken out of context what they had been told that it was unrecognizable. Posner also researched Lee Harvey Oswald and paints a searing portrait of a man who had become a mental case capable of doing anything.

Having read Posner’s book, I happened to mention it a few weeks later when having dinner with several of my aunts and uncles on Derby Day. The reaction I got astounded me. Not one person at the dinner who was an adult at the time of President Kennedy’s assassination believed that Oswald alone had killed Kennedy. Without exception, they all believed the assassination was the result of a conspiracy (the consensus was that the CIA was behind it).

Since that dinner, I have been more inclined to keep an open mind on the subject of JFK’s assassination. After all, none of the people whom I dined with that night were stupid, and some of them were highly intelligent. When I went to the bookstore a couple of weeks ago, and I noticed that there were some new books about President Kennedy’s assassination, I resolved to read at least two of them in order to see if they contained any new insights about the assassination, Kennedy, and his times.

Paul Schwietering is a former Democratic state central committeeman for the 14th state senate district.

If you want to get quickly “up to speed” on the JFK assassination, here is what to read:

1) LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination by Phillip Nelson
2) The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ by Roger Stone
3) JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters by James Douglass
4) Brothers: the Hidden History of the Kennedy Years by David Talbot
5) The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersh
6) Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty by Russ Baker
7) Power Beyond Reason: The Mental Collapse of Lyndon Johnson by Jablow Hershman Operation Cyanide: Why the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War III by Peter Hounam (LBJ engineered the attack on the USS Liberty)
9) Inside the Assassinations Records Review Board Volume 5, by Doug Horne
10) Watch “The Men Who Killed Kennedy – the Guilty Men – episode 9″ at YouTube –
best video ever on the JFK assassination; covers well Lyndon Johnson’s role
11) Google the essay “LBJ-CIA Assassination of JFK” by Robert Morrow
11) Google “National Security State and the Assassination of JFK by Andrew Gavin Marshall.”
12) Google “Chip Tatum Pegasus.” Intimidation of Ross Perot 1992
13) Google “Vincent Salandria False Mystery Speech.” Read every book & essay Vincent Salandria ever wrote.
14) Google “Unanswered Questions as Obama Annoints HW Bush” by Russ Baker
16) Google “Did the Bushes Help to Kill JFK” by Wim Dankbaar

Good to have that open mind Paul. At age 72 I have read just about every single book about the assassination and have determined that YES, it was a conspiracy and LHO did not act alone. But, that said, of course I have to be nuts.Along with law the law enforcement officers who ran up the Grassy knoll,a number of witnesses, and of course all those camera angles of footage that show people running up the hill.
My favorite quote comes from a person who said, “Oh yeah, I could smell gun smoke.” Um, just how do you smell gun smoke if you were six stories below the supposed place LHO shot his rifle?
Anyhow, I could go on and on, but, of course, anything I put out there that contradicts the official version of the events HAS to be wrong. Just sayin.’

It is sad indeed that JFK died. Imagine what the world of today would be like had he survived. We would be on the moon and far out into space. We would have grown as a species into a wisdom and maturity that would not tolerate bigotry and greed and evil. 911 would not have happened. We would not be the only superpower but we would be a family of nations all united to explore the universe in peace for all humanity. Every house would be solar-powered, every car, electric. Every man, woman and child would be encouraged and destined to reach new heights of intelligence and self-improvement. If we want to get to the truth of who killed Kennedy we must first, exhume his body and get the true facts of the trajectory of the shots, We must exhume Jack Ruby to determine his true cause of death. We must investigate all those who have benefited from JFK’s death. Many of them are still around, still propping up the lie that was the Warren Commission Report. And we must stop chasing phantom suspects, vague and shadowy mirages like the CIA, the military, Cubans, the Mafia, Big Oil. These are all smokescreens. To chase them is to chase the wind. It is sad that we had JFK taken from us… sadder still that no one has emerged who was as great as he. Call me crazy, call me a nut, call me all the names in the book but search deep your own heart and decide what kind of world would you rather have… this one or Camelot.